last night on CBC Newsworld (that's in Canada, btw) they showed most of his doc, followed by an audience/round-table discussion. it was showcased as part of their series The BIg Picture. anyway, no he doesn't say religion is the root of all evil, just a stinkin' pile of it.

some of the guests for the discussion were right-wing christian types. one guy (forgot his name) was repeatedly laughed at by the audience for his stupid statements. brilliant!

dawkins was a pitbull though. anytime he responded to a comment or question he was direct and repsectfull. great great stuff....

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I used to believe quite strongly that religion was the root of conflict and most evil. It's an easy conclusion to reach when one looks at the various messes in the world today and their apparent roots in theology.

The longer I've thought on the subject the more I realize this is simply not the case. Removing all religions tomorrow and replacing them with an atheist society would not end all conflicts. Conflicts will continue on unabated, and non-religious idealogies would step up to replace them.

Demonstratable proof of this exists today in atheist-communist China. There is no utopia in such a society, in fact, such a society is more repressed as a result.

I've read on Albert Einstein's viewpoints regarding religion and I find them very insightful. Einstein was best described as an agnostic. He found the notion of their being a personal God that involved Himself in the affairs of man as nonsense. He found various miracles of the bible preposterous and impossible based on the physical laws he had such a keen understanding of. Yet he also believed that religion played a very important role in humanity. He believed morality was solely an issue for mankind and that it was not a concern of God's. Therefore he felt religions role was to guide morality, which he felt was very important. Interestingly because of this, he held eastern agnostic religions like budhism in higher regard because they focused on the morality questions without involving an allmighty god in the message.

Absent any religions, I now fully believe a great number of people would cast away much of the morality that religion has instilled in them. After all, what better way to get people to behave civilized than the threat of eternal damnation? If not religion, some other organizing principle wrapped around morality would have to take its place, such as nationalism.

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Interpreting displays of erudition as pomposity is indicative of IDD, ie, Intelligence Deficiency Disorder. It would be good of you to provide an example of Dawkins’ pomposity or get some help.

While it’s true that spirituality and science can coexist, it is also true that they can’t coexist in the same arena. When a practitioner in each area enters the other’s turf he comes off looking stupid. The reason is that the premises required to navigate each area may well be mutually exclusive. Could there be a God? Sure there could be but there’s no way I can prove it. Ergo, I’m not going to go around talking like that’s a fact everyone has to take as, excuse the expression, gospel.

Bottom line: Dawkins is one of the good guys.

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Instead of trying to imagine what the world would be like if religion and the god-belief were suddenly to disappear tomorrow (or tonight, why not?), a singularly ridiculous idea, let's be a little more realistic (just a little) and try to imagine what human development would have been like if the whole concept of the supernatural had never happened at all; if humanity came to where we are now with NO supernatural beliefs. Would we be fundamentally different? Well, it's certainly safe to say that many wars and persecutions and sectarian strife of all stripes would never have happened (no crusades, no inquisition, etc.), but it's also likely that something else would have jumped in to fill the void. The ol' lust for power, wealth, and dominion surely would have been with us, gods or not, and those by themselves would be enough to make the world a rough neighborhood to live in. Would we be any more ethical or (you should excuse the word) moral? Well, I expect we'd be about the same. In spite of what those with their turned-around collars would have us believe, rules of good behavior would of necessity be created for obvious reasons that I'm sure I don't need to discuss. People would simply not look to a supernatural authority to know what to do and who to hate. I have no definite conclusion here, certainly not in the space of this post, but I toss this idea out for anyone who wants to chew on it. As for me, I'm going to curl up with a Stephen King novel and then go to sleep. Bye.

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I am big fan of Dawkins, who has helped elucidate the beauty of Darwin's work in a hostile intellectual climate. I have been thinking a lot about the role of faith in the modern world, and I have come to conclusions that are similar to Dawkins', although not as well expressed or widely disseminated. But I have come to an additional conclusion, which may explain a lot.

We rely on reason to inform our thoughts and actions. (It's not the only factor, of course: we also rely on reflex, instinct, emotion, and so forth.) But we rely on reason because it works. If the clear liquid in the lake is good to drink, the clear liquid in the stream is good to drink, too. The moon has changed shape in a particular way over a certain number of nights, so we can expect it to continue to do so in the future. Reason, applied long enough and strictly enough, will not only give us a useful calendar, but will eventually yield a general theory of relativity.

Some of us rely on faith (or unqualified belief) to guide our thoughts and actions. Faith, too, works. (Chew on that syntax, Martin Luther.) "Prayer gives me the strength to go on." "I feel better after I take communion." But causation remains hidden. Belief is ultimately self-referential. It may help us get through the day, but it can never infallibly predict the future, or reveal causal relationships.

Dawkins is right to be hostile, because from the viewpoint of the rational man, faith and belief are the enemies of progress and the jailers of the human spirit. But faith and reason are both ways of dealing with the universe. They are extremes on a continuum of human experience, and both have evolved with humanity to enable its survival. As we have forsaken stone tools, and pantheism, and hunter-gatherer culture, we must ultimately forsake belief. Whether we can accomplish that before our beliefs destroy us is a matter for urgent debate.

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(I shouldn't try to write this at an hour when I can barely write my e-mail address, but here goes:)

First, Evan's criticisms of Dawkins are essentially personal and not worth addressing. So he's a British academic and supernally smart. Get used to it. OK, I addressed them after all.

While I agree completely with Dawkins' rationalism and thus his basic critique of religion, I think that his emphasis on it conflicts with his primary cause: defending science, and evolution in particular. The problem is political: because most people, especially in the US, depend on the comfort religion provides them (yes, I'm being patronizing here), attacking religion simply doesn't fly politically. It is a much more effective defense of science to simply wall religion off in its own little reserve. Hence, the reason you shouldn't teach "intelligent design" in science class is that it ISN'T SCIENCE. We would be lying to our children, and worse, confusing them about how science works - the most important thing about it.

It would be OK to teach it in philosophy or comparative religion class, but this is the last thing the fanatics want, because it is an invitation to critique their "faith". Worse, comparative religion involves teaching OTHER religions. They would be the first to pull their kids out.

All this depends on science and religion being compatible, as long as they are kept in separate worlds. I agree with Dawkins that they are not, in fact, logically compatible (in fact, they are competing world-views), but that doesn't matter.

On the other hand, it would be silly to claim that religion is the cause of our conflicts and problems. The Communists already disproved that, by acting like religion. At its worst. Religion does EXACERBATE our conflicts, precisely because it glorifies irrationality and provides an excuse for absolutism. In practice, though, our real problems are fanaticism and concentration of power. Social clubs with a spiritual pretext do little harm and may do considerable good. In fact, the liberal churches are the Left's most important allies, because left-wing values mostly come straight out of the teachings of Jesus. Well, much interpreted, and with a few vital bits added in, like tolerance, secularism, and liberty, without which we are right back in the Religious Wars. The Religious Right is stunningly un- if not anti- Christian. That is, avowed Christian values, not practice. In historical practice, they're right in line; hence the strange and hopefully shaky alliance with the Catholic Church, which would have burned them alive not so long ago.

Diversions aside, we better not be too hard on the churches because we need them; and biologists had better not emphasis the incompatibility with religion because it confirms their enemies' arguments.

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"He calls Christian Theology 'vacuous' despite the centuries of contribution by some of history's biggest brains."

'Vacuous' means 'having no content', not 'produced by someone with a small brain over a short period of time'.

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I think Evan's assessment of Dawkin's arrogance on many issues is correct-- and his tendency to reductionism, which is also not great science. The latter for me is a difference of opinion about scientific theory, which is rather distinct from his ideas abuot religion. (For those that don't know, the problem I and many others have with Dawkins is that he reduces evolution to the replication of genes and tends to discount all the other stuff that happens around them. He and Stephen Jay Gould had a ratehr famous set of disagreements. I love the fact that both men were proven not completely correct, which says some wonderful, fascinating things about evolution, but I digress).

Dawkins I thought, did not explain his position abut religion-based societies well--I'd have simply asked how many people in the audience would like to live among the Saudis or in Iran, or among the Puritans of 1690. I'd have also mentioned that the Puritans managed to execute several people in my hometown for doing things that are flatly impossible--yet many accept that the Bible's accounts are almost by definition true.

I also wouldn't define religion as completely irrational in and of itself. It has driven many advances, even in the sciences, because people jkept asking why God would do certain things and were driven to find out.

Dawkins does have a tendency to look down his nose a bit. He's entitled, I suppose, but I find it a bit unhelpful. Rather like Arthur C. Clarke, who I might suggest is his intellectual compatriot. (Clarke describes religion as a kind of insanity, but he lives in Sri Lanka so that might be why).

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Science NOR Religion, I would like to point out that from where I sit there needs be no division between the two, nor any battles between them. It seems to me that both sides have some sort of mental illness in that they both believe that they are right, absolutely, and that faith in the system is all that is necessary to make it true.

People need to get real and realize that believing in Evolution is JUST AS MUCH an act of faith as is belief in Creation theory.

The only thing I can agree with in regards to what I heard on that interview is that spirituality can be (is?) separate from the notion of a personal God, and is absolutely separate from organized religion.

I don't see why it always has to be one or the other. In a way, isn't the fact that both sides ask you to choose between them sort of indicative of their cult-like roots? Why can't science let you also believe in God? Why can't religions let you also believe in science? Why not? Because they are competing, like any cult would, for your ultimate obedience.

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He's toned his contempt down, even acknowledging that there might be a God (you can't prove a negative)

It is false that you can't prove a negative. For instance, I could easily prove that it is NOT the case that 2 is an odd number.

Here is a proof that something doesn't exist.
1. If there exists a planet with twice the mass of the Earth between the Earth and Mars, then Earth will have such and such kinetics.
2. The Earth does not have such and such kinetics.
3. Therefore, there does not exist a planet with twice the mass of the Earth between the Earth and Mars.

Philosophers have used a similar (though not identical) proof style to argue that God doesn't exist:
1. If evil exists, then there exists no omnipotent benevolent being.
2. Evil exists.
3. Therefore, there exists no omnipotent benevolent being.

I am not endorsing this argument against God (not without some further qualifications), but scientists prove that things don't exist all the time.

I don't know what can be done about the glib claim that 'You can't prove a negative.' Every logic text refutes it, but for some reason it persists. The question is whether there is good evidence for a negative claim.

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Regardless of what Dawkins may claim, many scientists are (were) religious, although not dogmatists. See Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Albert Einstein, etc etc. Religion isn't the problem. People are the problem. People use their religion to justify their bad behavior, and their bad behavior is the problem.

Everyone is entitled to their belief system, but they are not entitled to insult those who disagree, and the more public the forum, the greater the obligation to not be needlessly insulting (see Freeman Dyson on his take on atheistic scientists).

Insults are cheap and they allow you to not discuss the real issues, which in this case are the self-delusion and self-excusing of bad human behavior.

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Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in blaming "Godless Communists" everytime there is a problem in the world. However, Communism was/is the other extreme of Capitalism. It wasn't very nice, promotes the idea that "there is no deity", and is a very oppressive system. They did have a strong desire to control, which promotes egotism. So, I think that could be a major factor in what is wrong with people, at times. It is not whether there is a deity that is the problem. It is how far people will go to promote their beliefs/disbeliefs. Do people often associate their value as a human being, with their personal beliefs or disbeliefs? I think so.

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Why is it the standard m.o. of theists and those with supernatural beliefs to attack the character of those who refute thier beliefs? Dawkins is a "pompous prick" and this impugnes his argument how? Why so defensive? Did Dawkins break some American p.c. rule that dictates everyone must espouse "religious tolerance" in the public arena? To brights, belief in deities is as preposterous as believing in santa claus or the tooth fairy. Belief in falsehoods is ignorance. Why should Dawkins or anyone else have to accomodate others' ignorance?

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Interesting discussion. A few misc points gathered from previous threads

1) Lots of biologists (of which I am one) would never claim that religion and scientific veiwpoints are incompatible. As commented on above-they often address different spheres, and the problem comes in when we try to force each to address the same issue. I can't envision science "disproving" the existence of god (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or so they say) any more than I can countenance using religion to explain evolution. In that respect, current movements conflating the two(say Intellegent Design) are destructive to both science and religion. ID forces god to inhabit the "cracks" in our understanding of the natural world, which implicitly diminshes the role of religion as science explains more and more. Why would we want to do this?

2) Despite a reasonable message (teaching religion in science classes is bad) Dawkins is not a good spokes person IMHO. Its not the content, its the format. Although he's more moderate now, he is still condescending, arrogant and snide-which immediately invalidates anybody with an opinion slightly different from his, even if they haven't settled on it yet. (Several years ago he stated the scientists who bellieve in god are hypocrites). Believe me, its annoying as hell to argue with Creation Scientists and ID proponents (I have done so repeatedly on Dempski's ID website), but it's not about being right. Its about trying to figure out where the other party's objections come from and responding. Perhaps you won't convince the hardcore adherents, but that is a small fraction, and refusing to engage these people is shooting yourself in the foot.

3) Scientists (and science proponents) just don't get the need to convey their world view to the general public (or know how best to do it). At least Dawkins is trying, but its a small (albeit shrill!) voice. Interesting movie out there called FLock of Dodo's that examines this in light of the ID/Evo debate. They point out that the Discovery Institute (Dempski's ID mouthpiece) is a $ 5 million per year public relations/advertising/media monster (funded by some far right heavy hitters), with the most comparable science advocacy group having a budget approximately 10x smaller. Where are the science champions out there?? For this, as well as other reasons, the % of americans who don't believe in Evo is larger than in any industrialized country except for Turkey. Egads! Who's the dodo here?

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how many times have atheists and agnostics launched wars of conquest against or forced conversion upon believers?

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Reason -- best one I ever heard was that it's equal parts logic and compassion. Not mutually exclusive of faith. Not on a continuum with faith. Nothing to do with faith plus or minus.

Faith-based -- who knows what that means. Politically it's just a pious sounding camouflage term hiding a raft of sins. Verbal currency exchanged in the world of grifters and the sadly gullible.

Creationists -- these would be entertaining kooks but for their ascendant power, so unfortunately: Dangerously Ignorant Bastards.

I don't know about Dawkins' attitude. Frankly I'm more worried about the sorry state of science literacy in this country.

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A standard approach in mathematical theorems is to assume the opposite of your assertion, and given the premises, arrive at a contradiction, i.e., the opposite of the assertion is false, therefore, the assertion is true.
It goes beyond that though. The deepest theorem of 20th century was proved by Kurt Godel (Incompleteness and Undecidability), which (among many startling results) states that any discrete logical system (isomorphic to Euclidean geometry for instance) must contain statements that cannot be proved nor disproved and if the set of axioms were expanded to include such a statement, the augmented system would suffer from the same affliction, i.e., there would be other statements neither provable nor disprovable.
Perhaps the humans understood this on an intuitive basis and came up with the idea of God as a vessel designed to contain paradoxes in order to deal with this fleeting goal of completeness.
Either way, these topics are way off limits to the monobrowed gentlemen of the Right Religion.
Still, for someone able to enjoy company of Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking next door at Cambridge, it is an egregious oversight.

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mate, you have the troll Techubus agreeing with ya (see his/her previous posts, oft heavily disguised reichwing rhetoric).. that's gotta be a worry!
Having lived in the U.K for 10 years, I have no problem with Dawkins snubbing religion. You see we folk outside the U.S simply do not have this puritanical in breed culture y'all Yanks do, and feel we have every right to turn our noses down at religion, its our right to do so.
Why should the burden of proof be on atheists ? Surely the burden of proof should be on religious people to prove God exists.
Hell, why bother, if people want to be controlled ( even Alternet Journalists) then its none of my business.

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Humans it seems are taught that everything of value is outside of the self.Call it Original sin as Christians do for having been thrown out of the Garden.Call it consumerism by which our self worth is determined by our buying power. This also sems true of power and status.Spiritual teachings that claim we are connected to each other and connected to whatever It might be routinely get those people burned at the stake.So what is It inside of any of us that makes us so vulnerable to the continual mind numbing litany of this group ,this church,this religion,this car,this home,this partner,this career,ad nauseum?If people could be taught to be whole they might still come to believe in any number of things. They just would'nt feel the need to inflict that on everyone else and it would sure put a big dent in all of those faith based ideologies that are busy fleecing their flocks.As long as the sheep get three hots and a cot they don't seem to mind getting sheared.

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There is not really much of a difference here, only one that is created in the minds of us humans, who are so incredibly trained at seeing god as being something outside ourselves. When aborded by some fundamentalist Christians on the sidewalk, I routinely say I am an atheist Christian. That either gets a lively conversation going, or cuts any budding one off.

How is that possible? Simply by understanding that the teachings of Christ are not a Christian thing, they are fundamental to "clean living" and living in peace and harmony. With your own self.

John Conway's Game of Life is an illustration of the meeting of the two apparent poles: Here is a quote from Scientific American:

"The basic idea is to start with a simple configuration of counters (organisms), one to a cell, then observe how it changes as you apply Conway's "genetic laws" for births, deaths, and survivals. Conway chose his rules carefully, after a long period of experimentation, to meet three desiderata."

Birth Death and SURVIVAL are three fundamental principles of any life, and are found as the fundamental teachings in religions, albeit disguised by symbols (gods, events). Just briefly: The trimurtis in Hinduism, the affiliation of Brahman (the creator), Vishnu (the sustainer) and Shiva (the destroyer/transformer), represent this. And that is just the start.

The problem is in the fundamentalist (and I woulöd argue materialist) view of the Good Books, that try to say that everything in there is the truth. That is ideology more than anything. And ideology cannot provide the truth, since it is sure that it is always right, infallible.

Anyway, I have to run, that was a little thought.

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There is the reality tunnel of the fundamentalist Christian just as there is the reality tunnel of the fundamentalist Scientist. There is the reality tunnel of the neocon just as there is the reality tunnel of the progressive. There are countless reality tunnels out there. The only thing all the reality tunnels share is that they are all a tunnel vision of reality. Like all books and ideas, Dawkins new book is simply a glimpse into his reality tunnel (namely, the reality tunnel of the scientific method). The only reason the science reality tunnel seems so great to many people is because it is a good reality tunnel for manipulating matter, which a lot of people are impressed by. If a reader shares in Dawkins’ reality tunnel then what he claims will seem true. However, if a reader comes from a significantly different reality tunnel than Dawkins, what he says will seem just as foolish to the reader as the people who don’t share Dawkin’s own reality tunnel seem to Dawkins. It is almost certain that a hundred years from now, scientists will be claiming truths, with just as straight a face a Dawkins does today, that disprove what Dawkins himself assumes today as truth. Sorry, but science is no more a meta-theory than religion. What we assume is true is based on our tunnel; tunnels are necessarily always incomplete. The only way we could ever really know truth is if we could step outside the system (the universe); and if we could do that then we would be God, or one with God (see Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem). Which is to say, in my reality tunnel, I would define God as that which is outside the system.

What tunnel do you view reality through?

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The Republicans are USING religion, have offered "rewards" , recognition, and pay offs to so called Christian religions for their support from the pulpit. How is killing thousands of people religious? How is reducing health care, religious? How is ignoring the poor religious? Republicans are just damned dollar worshipping hypocrits.

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I dusted out the transcript of an old BBC interview of Bertrand Russell conducted by Woodrow Wyatt in 1959. Many topics were discussed, religion being one. Here's a verbatim reproduction of their conversation. I thought it touched on many topics discussed as comments to this post.
--------------------

WW.: Have you ever had religious impulses, Lord Russell?

BR: Oh, yes. When I was adolescent I was deeply religious. I was more interested in religion than anything else, except perhaps mathematics. And being interested in religion led me -- which it doesn't seem often to do -- to look into the question of whether there was reason to believe it. I took up three questions. It seemed to me that God and immortality and free will were the three most essential questions, and I examined these one by one in the reverse order, begining with free will, and gradually I came to the conclusion that there was no reason to believe in any of these. I thought I was going to be very dissapointed, but oddly enough I wasn't.

WW: Do you think it is certain that there's no such thing as God, or simply that it is just not proved?

BR: I don't think it's certain that there is no such thing -- no -- I think that it is on exactly the same level as the Olympic gods, or Norwegian gods; they may also exist, the gods of Olympus and Valhalla. I can't prove they don't, but I think the Christian God has not more likelihood than they had. I think they are a bare possibility.

WW: Do you think that religion is good or harmful in its effects?

BR: I think that most of its effects in history have been harmful. Religion caused the Egyptian priests to fix the calendar, and to note the occurrence of eclipses so well that in time they were able to predict them. I think those were beneficial effects of religion; but I think a great majority have been bad. I think they have been bad because it was held important that people should believe something for which there did not exist good evidence and that falsified everybody's thinking, falsified systems of education, and set up also, I think, complete moral heresy; namely, that it is right to believe certain things, and wrong to believe certain others, apart from the question of whether the things in question are true or false. In the main, I think religion has done a great deal of harm. Largely by sanctifying conservatism and adhesion to ancient habits, and still more by sanctifying intolerance and hatred. The amount of intolerance that has gone into religion, especially in Europe, is quite terrible.

WW: But then, if religion is harmful, and yet humans have always insisted on having one, what is the answer?

BR: On, humans haven't. Some have, and those are the persons who are used to it. In some countries, for instance, people walk on stilts, and they don't like walking without stilts. Religion is just the same thing. Some countries have got accustomed to it. I spent a year in China, and I found that the ordinary average Chinese had no religion whatsoever, and they were just as happy -- I think, given their bad circumstances, happier than most Christians would have been.

WW: But I think that a Christian would say that if he could convert them into being Christians they'd be much happier.

BR: Well, I don't think that is borne out by the evidence at all.

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WW: Yes, but now doesn't humankind rather search for some cause of faith outside itself, which appears to be bigger than humankind, not merely as a question of cowardice or leaning on it, but also wanting to do something for it?

BR: Well, but there are plenty of things bigger than oneself. I mean, first of all there's your family, then there's your nation, then there's humankind in general. Those are all bigger than oneself and are quite sufficient to occupy any genuine feelings of benevolence that a person may have.

WW: Do you think that organized religion is always going to go on having the same kind of grip on humankind?

BR: I think that it depends upon whether people solve their social problems. I think that if there go on being great wars and great oppressions and many people leading very unhappy lives, probably religion will go on, because I've observed that the belief in the goodness of God is inversely proportional to the evidence. When there is no evidence for it at all, people believe it, and, when things are going well and you might believe it, they don't. So I think that, if people solve their social problems, religion will die out. But on the other hand, if they don't, I don't think it will.

WW: Do you think that you and I are going to be completely snuffed out when we die?

BR: Certainly, yes. I don't see why not. I know that the body disintegrates, and I think that there's no reason whatever to suppose that the mind goes on when the body has disintegrated.

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I think the vital point most miss when discussing religion is that everyone seems to think faith and God are inexorably linked.

Faith IS benefical, for the reasons discussed above. But faith in God, or Allah, or Odin for that matter all rewards the same benefits. If one truly and with all ones heart and existence believed that a particular lamppost would save and provide for them "a guiding light" in the afterlife, or in this one, no religious person can tell me there's a spot of difference between the benefits of such and a religion.

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